Many of today's user interfaces are websites, requiring the use of a browser to access the interface content. However, different browsers may display the same content differently to the client users. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla FireFox each implement the XML DOM (Document Object Model) differently. In addition, through use of dynamic web page technologies such as JavaScript or AJAX, the content that the user is currently viewing may have been modified from its original state as provided by the server. Accordingly, it is often difficult to determine exactly what a client is doing and how the content is being displayed to the client, because the client code is executing on a different system than the web server. This can make problem determination particularly difficult, especially when trying to understand errors or other unexpected behavior that is occurring on the client end.
In order to provide a robust problem determination solution in existing systems, browser-side logging must be implemented on the client computer to record exactly what the user is seeing and doing. This typically involves recording all values that the user might have input into controls, and tracking every change that scripts have made to the displayed content. There is currently no system for efficiently recording comprehensive client-side browser display information at a point in time and conveying this information back to the server or another third party for analysis.